Sunday Times

On 26 November 2000, the Sunday Times published "a selection of the information concerning Great Britain obtained from the computer database of East Germany's foreign intelligence service" housed in Berlin at the Gauck commission.

An accompanying report by Stephen Grey and John Goetz, "Target Britain," Sunday Times, 26 Nov. 2000, notes that the information "reveals the full scale of Stasi penetration in Britain. Sources in Whitehall provided sensitive intelligence, including, it seems, prior warning of British support for the American bombing of Libya in 1986. The British Army was infiltrated, the security of military bases in West Germany was compromised and advances in nuclear weapons and submarines were disclosed to East Berlin, which told the KGB in Moscow everything it knew. Informers inside the Labour party also supplied confidential documents....

"MI5 ... is believed to be ready to hand over dossiers on up to 10 individuals who could face prosecution. There are many other names on the British section of the index. Over the past six months The Sunday Times has obtained the codenames of more than 100 agents or contacts in Britain and details of more than 8,000 reports compiled about this country."

"MI6 is examining the possible involvement of Mohamed al-Fayed in the leaking of confidential information about its staff. The secret intelligence service has evidence that the Harrods owner assembled information about MI6 officers days before a list of 116 names, dates of birth and overseas postings was released on the Internet last week."

"At least six Britons named as secret agents for East Germany have been identified by MI5 officers hunting a Stasi spy ring. But government law officers have decided not to prosecute." Those so identified include Fiona Houlding, codenamed Diana in the Stasi files, "who fell in love with an East German agent while a student at Leipzig" and is "alleged to have carried out information-gathering for the communist regime." Hull University lecturer Robin Pearson has also been "named as having spied for the Stasi for 12 years between 1977 and 1989.... Another alleged Stasi agent is Vic Allen, a retired professor of economics at Leeds University.... At least three other Stasi agents could be identified this week from the files."

Michael Pakenham "runs a secret committee that is co-ordinating a wide-ranging crackdown on journalists investigating intelligence scandals." Pakenham "is probably the most influential spymaster in Britain. It is no secret that he chairs the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which sets priorities for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ."

[UK/PostCW/00]

Sunday Times (London). "[Insight:] The University that Taught Britons to Spy for the Stasi." 19 Sep. 1999. [http://www.sunday-times.co.uk]

"Stasi documents obtained by The Sunday Times" reveal that Karl Marx University in Leipzig "was a secret recruiting ground for the Stasi.... British and other westerners studying or teaching there were systematically targeted and sounded out as potential agents by East Germany's spymasters."

"A top-secret document giving the main switchboard number, fax number and high-security government telephone network number [has] appeared on [web] sites" around the world. "The document was one of a number removed in 1996 from MI5's London headquarters by David Shayler, the former MI5 officer, according to a Home Office source. Shayler denied posting the document on the web."